According to PC World, iTunes is the new AOL, and they are mostly right. It is a bloated piece of software that does too much for one program. It used to just be a program for managing music on a Mac. By the time it came Windows it was used for manage then audio only iPods and buy songs, which made sense to add to the existing functions. The problem happened when iPods and iTunes started do video. They now doing more then music and rather then making a new program iTunes was made bigger to handle the new file type and making it less fitting of its name, but is still media that worked similar to audio files.
When buyable iPod games came out, iTunes was now being used for content that could even be used on a computer but since their were so few of them it didn’t make sense to create another program for the iPod. The iPhone has since taken this to whole new level with apps. Now iTunes has gone from a music organizer and player to an iDevice manager. With all the things it does it’s impossible for it not to be big and slow making users hate and turn to other music programs.
This needs be fixed and the only way to do its to separate all of iTunes functions into two or three programs. It may seem absurd but there is a reason why when photos came to the iPod Apple deiced not to combine iTunes and iPhoto, they were both great on their own and the sync can be handled by having the apps work together. The first program should be iTunes core, it goes back to the old days and handles audio (music, podcasts, audiobooks, internet radio). Depending on how you look at things it may make sense to keep video it or give that its own program, the latter keeps the similar media, which makes sense especially when you take into account music video and video podcasts, while the latter would allow for smaller more specialized programs. The final programs would handle syncing between Apple devices (iPods, Apple TV, iPhones) and the programs they get files from (iTunes, iPhoto, Safari, Mail, Address Book, iCal and the Windows equivalents). This could also help manage the device settings and how they interact with Mobile Me. While they at it they should break up the iTunes store, it is already separated on the iPhone so why not let iTunes do the music (or media) store and the manager handle the app store. With the divided programs they will see more use and less complains about iTunes.
